Countercultural migrants in the west of Ireland

The field research on which this paper is based was carried out during 1985-8, and formed part of a larger project investigating the importance of informal economic activities for endogenous regional development in the west. In the course of this study, countercultural immigrants were identified as a major factor of eocnomic and socio-cultural change in the region, especially in their role as innovative actors utilising the structures of the informal economy. In some areas of the west, intensive culture contact at the interface between tradition and counterculture has facilitated the maintenance of informal socio-economic relationships offering a substantive alternative to the capitalistic economy, thereby compensating at least to some extent for the effects of peripherality on regional development. -Author